Why didn't the Titanic's personnel evacuate to the iceberg?

[Simplicio]

Seems like an obvious enough idea: once they realized the ship was sinking, reverse course, find the iceberg and jury rig some ramps/ladders for people that can't fit in the life boats to climb on to the berg to await rescue. My understanding is they had some two hours after the impact before the boat went under, so it seems like they should've had time to retrace their course even if they continued forward a good while after the initial impact.

Its a little hard to tell since there isn't any sense of scale, but photos I've seen of candidates for the iceberg taken by the ships that rescued the survivors make it seem like they would be accessible to someone standing on a deck 100 feet above the water line (granted, the Titanic's deck was presumably getting closer to the waterline the longer they waited).

Obviously they didn't do this, so presumably there was a reason, but I'm wondering what the reason was.

[msmith537]

See any good spots for offloading 2000 people?

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by msmith537

See any good spots for offloading 2000 people?

Again, no scale so its hard to tell.

But yea, it seems like you could unload people off on the end of the iceburg thats closest to the water. Especially since your starting from a deck thats high off the waterline.

[Blake]

1) A ship that size doesn't stop on a dime. After it struck the iceberg it kept going for miles. So to unload the people, they would have had to turn around (turning circle of the Titanic: Big) and try to find an iceberg, in the dark, in a leaking ship, with no radar.. That isn't really doable.

2) Even if they did have a way to relocate the iceberg, how do you get close to the above water part without hitting the below water part? One collision for the night was probably enough.

3) Even if you could get close without a collision, how are you going to get people across to the iceberg? The sides of icebergs slope outwards, so the closest the ship could have come would have been a hundred yards or so. Ships don't routinely carry 100 yard gangplanks for ferrying passengers to icebergs.

Even if the iceberg had been a tropical island with a sandy beach, the only way they could have got the passengers off was to shuttle them with the lifeboats. A ship the size of the Titanic just can't get close enough to a natural solid object to run a ramp across. Even most of the world's ports couldn't handle her. Using the lifeboats to ferry people to an iceberg was, of course, not an option. Nobody is going to clamber up an ice cliff in the dark.

[Alessan]

Remember, the Titanic didn't smash into the iceberg, it sideswiped it. By the time the ship came to a halt, it was probably miles away.

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by Blake

1) A ship that size doesn't stop on a dime. After it struck the iceberg it kept going for miles. So to unload the people, they would have had to turn around (turning circle of the Titanic: Big) and try to find an iceberg, in the dark, in a leaking ship, with no radar.. That isn't really doable.

How far did they go after the initial collision? Wikipedia doesn't seem to say, but they apparently realized they were in trouble pretty quickly, so I'd assume they'd come to a stop pretty quickly afterwords.

3) Even if you could get close without a collision, how are you going to get people across to the iceberg? The sides of icebergs slope outwards, so the closest the ship could have come would have been a hundred yards or so. Ships don't routinely carry 100 yard gangplanks for ferrying passengers to icebergs.

In the initial collision, the ship got close enough to the berg so that ice could fall onto the deck, while there was only a glancing blow below the waterline. So apparently there was at least on one direction of approach where the ship could get close to the ice without "running aground".

[glaeken]

This was one of James Cameron’s suggestions on a recent documentary and I remember the main counter point to the idea being if they could have turned around and got back to the ice berg then they probably would have been able to reach the California which would have been a far better idea.

I suspect that had they continued sailing full speed ahead and tried to reach the California that probably would have increased the rate they were taking on water at and may have made the attempt to reach the other ship futile.

I think with the benefits of hindsight solutions seem obvious but I think it’s probably a case that when it was actually happening they probably did not accept that they had lost the ship until it was far too late to do anything. I am sure that for some time they will have been working on keeping the ship afloat and may well have thought they could prevent a sinking and limp into port.

Even if they thought the ship was lost no-one would have predicted it would have gone down so fast. They probably thought they had far more time than they did.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Simplicio

How far did they go after the initial collision? Wikipedia doesn't seem to say, but they apparently realized they were in trouble pretty quickly, so I'd assume they'd come to a stop pretty quickly afterwords.

From memory of a documentary I saw many years ago (not the most reliable source) they went a couple of miles. This page says the best stopping distance at 20 knots was half a mile. At low speeds the turning circle was over a mile. So if we take half a mile as the absolute best distance from the iceberg, they would have had to try to either turn around to find the thing in the dark, or else try to creep back towards it in reverse. Neither sounds like a good idea on a ship with no radar.

In the initial collision, the ship got close enough to the berg so that ice could fall onto the deck, while there was only a glancing blow below the waterline. So apparently there was at least on one direction of approach where the ship could get close to the ice without "running aground".

I would hardly call a collision that tore at least 5 large holes in thick sheet metal a "glancing blow".

Aside from that, there remains a great deal of uncertainty where the ice actually came from. This was brought up at the original inquests, since there is no obvious way that a ship with the cross section of the Titanic could strike an iceberg below the water line, take no damage to the upper parts of the ship, yet still have ice on the decks. Remember, the Titanic bulged outwards from where it was holed, it wasn't flat sided. So for this to happen would require an iceberg with a huge C-shaped overhang that just isn't seen in real icebergs. There is a photograph of the Titanic iceberg, and there aren't any such overhangs on it.

The best explanation I have seen is one given at the inquest: that the collision with the iceberg simply knocked ice off the structure of the ship, and witnesses assumed it was from the iceberg. The next best explanation is that the force of the impact caused ice to shatter and ricochet up the gap between the berg and the hull.

But even if the iceberg did have the implausibly huge overhang, that still doesn't make it possible for people to board it, since there must, obviously, have been a concave surface from below the waterline all the way to the top of the beg, well above the level of the deck. That makes it, if anything, even harder to get people onto it.

[Machine Elf]

Originally Posted by Blake

I would hardly call a collision that tore at least 5 large holes in thick sheet metal a "glancing blow".

"Glancing blow" describes the angle of the impact; the severity is a separate issue. A glancing blow to the head from a bullet, for example, can be fatal.

Given that the side of the Titanic is what struck the iceberg, "glancing blow" describes the scenario perfectly. See for example paragraph 2 here.

[constanze]

Aside from the problem of hindsight, the iceberg being too far away and the general problem with people not taking the situation seriously (at first the passengers didn't put life vests on because it was a bother to interrupt festivities, and the personnell didn't want to cause a panic so they didn't urge them, together with the belief "It's unsinkable!"), I can see two other problems with trying to use an iceberg as transportation:

Unless you bring something to sit on, you're going to get hypothermia quickly, too. You'd also need to bring something to build a shelter against the wind, plus food.

Icebergs, despite having most of their size underwater, are not a stable system. They are known to frequently flip over, or parts break off. A large mass of people on it will only hasten the melting / breaking process and add instability.

The other ships coming to the rescue were looking for boats and single people in the water, not people on icebergs. Once the people were on the iceberg, they had no means of steering the thing, or of sending messages (no radio) except maybe by flares. The ocean is pretty big to find one iceberg among many.

[Stink Fish Pot]

Originally Posted by constanze

Aside from the problem of hindsight, the iceberg being too far away and the general problem with people not taking the situation seriously (at first the passengers didn't put life vests on because it was a bother to interrupt festivities, and the personnell didn't want to cause a panic so they didn't urge them, together with the belief "It's unsinkable!"), I can see two other problems with trying to use an iceberg as transportation:

Unless you bring something to sit on, you're going to get hypothermia quickly, too. You'd also need to bring something to build a shelter against the wind, plus food.

Icebergs, despite having most of their size underwater, are not a stable system. They are known to frequently flip over, or parts break off. A large mass of people on it will only hasten the melting / breaking process and add instability.

The other ships coming to the rescue were looking for boats and single people in the water, not people on icebergs. Once the people were on the iceberg, they had no means of steering the thing, or of sending messages (no radio) except maybe by flares. The ocean is pretty big to find one iceberg among many.

Well, they found the iceberg to photograph it. I think if there were a bunch of people waving, they'd probably see them too.

People in the boats would probably mention that other people were moved to an iceberg. Which one? The one with all the waving Penguins on it!

As for shelter for wind and food, everything I've read mentioned that the seas were extremely calm the night the titanic hit the berg. Lack of wind is one of the reasons for this. Also, food was unnecessary, since help was on the way. I think the first ship ( carpathia) got there about two hours after the boat went down. I don't think anyone would be starving.

I think the answers have been given.
1. No way to get back to the berg
2. No way to get close enough to it to offload anyone if they did manage to get back to the berg.

I think it was as simple as that.

[Shakester]

Originally Posted by glaeken

....then they probably would have been able to reach the California which would have been a far better idea.

I suspect that had they continued sailing full speed ahead and tried to reach the California that probably would have increased the rate they were taking on water at and may have made the attempt to reach the other ship futile.

I'm pretty sure the Titanic never had a chance of getting to California anyway, given that it was in the northern Atlantic Ocean and heading for New York.

[glaeken]

I would think that is probably true though it was said to be less than 10 miles away. I think it was only bought up as it was seen as in theory more straight forward than turning around and attempting to find an ice berg they had hit a mile or two back. Another suggestion from the same show was apparently there was pack ice fairly nearby and they could have landed passengers on that.

They never covered if trying to go anywhere though would have resulted in them taking on water at an increased rate which I think it would.

One engineer said that if they had gathered every single life jacket and put them into the forward holds that would have been enough to balance the ship out and have it reach a point where it had taken on as much water as it was going to and at that point would not sink or break its back. I would imagine collecting all the life jackets as the boat is sinking might not have gone down well though.

[AClockworkMelon]

Based on James Cameron's 1997 documentary film Titanic the boiler rooms were all flooded and sealed up with watertight doors immediately after the ship struck ice. Wouldn't this have prevented them from going anywhere other than where the ship's inertia would carry her?

[JKellyMap]

Originally Posted by Shakester

I'm pretty sure the Titanic never had a chance of getting to California anyway, given that it was in the northern Atlantic Ocean and heading for New York.

Maybe I'm being whooshed...but in case I'm not:

The Californian was a ship only ten miles away whose crew misunderstood the Titanic's flares for some kind of party fun, and so missed an opportunity to rescue most (maybe all) of the survivors.

[Great Antibob]

Originally Posted by Shakester

I'm pretty sure the Titanic never had a chance of getting to California anyway, given that it was in the northern Atlantic Ocean and heading for New York.

Just in case this is not a joke: SS Californian

[glaeken]

Originally Posted by AClockworkMelon

Based on James Cameron's 1997 documentary film Titanic the boiler rooms were all flooded and sealed up with watertight doors immediately after the ship struck ice. Wouldn't this have prevented them from going anywhere other than where the ship's inertia would carry her?

The documentary that suggested putting them on the Ice berg was a James Cameron documentary and as shown in the show it was specifically one of Cameron's suggestions so it appears he certainly thinks they could still go where they wanted to go. The documentary was called Titanic the final word

[TruCelt]

Originally Posted by Shakester

I'm pretty sure the Titanic never had a chance of getting to California anyway, given that it was in the northern Atlantic Ocean and heading for New York.

"The California" was another ship in the area which tried to warn them.

http://library.thinkquest.org/18626/BIceberg.html

In the wireless room, Jack Phillips was busy dealing with the Cape Race <definition: Cape Race - post cards to shore> traffic when, at 11:00pm, he was suddenly interrupted by a loud signal from the nearby California, announcing, "We are stopped and surrounded by ice." Angry at the intrusion, which must have almost deafened him, Phillips retorted, "Shut up, shut up. You’re jamming my signal. I’m busy. I’m working Cape Race." Before the California could give her position, some 20 miles north of the Titanic, she was unceremoniously cut off. The Californian’s wireless operator, Cyril Furmstone Evanse, listened patiently for another quarter of an hour or so before giving up.

[Anne Neville]

Originally Posted by Blake

Even if the iceberg had been a tropical island with a sandy beach, the only way they could have got the passengers off was to shuttle them with the lifeboats. A ship the size of the Titanic just can't get close enough to a natural solid object to run a ramp across. Even most of the world's ports couldn't handle her. Using the lifeboats to ferry people to an iceberg was, of course, not an option. Nobody is going to clamber up an ice cliff in the dark.

How would the people be rescued from the iceberg? Nowadays, they might use a helicopter, but the first operational helicopter wasn't flown until 1936.

If the Titanic has just sunk after colliding with an iceberg, the Californian (or any other ship) is probably not going to deliberately sail close to an iceberg. That would be stupid. Most of an iceberg is under water, so it's very possible that you'd run into the underwater part of the iceberg before you could get close to the part that is above the water, where the people would be. They don't have sonar to look at the iceberg underwater, the world's first patent for such a device didn't come until a month after the Titanic sank. It's hard to imagine how they could safely approach an iceberg.

If an iceberg can sink a ship the size of the Titanic, it's probably also hazardous to lifeboats. That way of rescuing people from the iceberg probably won't work. It also presents a problem for getting people onto the iceberg.

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by Blake

1) A ship that size doesn't stop on a dime. After it struck the iceberg it kept going for miles. So to unload the people, they would have had to turn around (turning circle of the Titanic: Big) and try to find an iceberg, in the dark, in a leaking ship, with no radar.. That isn't really doable.

I dunno, they'd already found an iceberg in the dark once that evening....

[Alka Seltzer]

Originally Posted by Stink Fish Pot

Well, they found the iceberg to photograph it. I think if there were a bunch of people waving, they'd probably see them too.

It's not certain that the iceberg photographed is actually the one that the Titanic struck. In any case, it's unlikely they'd have been able to find it again in the dark. It was a moonless night with very low visibility, hence the failure to spot it in time to avoid the collision.

[abel29a]

Originally Posted by AClockworkMelon

Based on James Cameron's 1997 documentary film Titanic the boiler rooms were all flooded and sealed up with watertight doors immediately after the ship struck ice. Wouldn't this have prevented them from going anywhere other than where the ship's inertia would carry her?

According to a BBC documentary I saw a week ago they only lost two out of five boiler rooms to flooding, so they could still make headway. Indeed, Cpt. Smith ordered ahead slow a few minutes after the collision, although I cannot remember the reason for this. When the ahead slow was given, water started rushing into boiler room no. 5 more rapidly (this was the critical fifth compartment, if they could keep the water at bay there, they stood a chance), and the order for full stop was soon given. After this Titanic did not attempt to move again.

[Shakester]

Originally Posted by Great Antibob

Just in case this is not a joke: SS Californian

It wasn't a joke: If the post I was responding to had said "The Californian" I might have recognised it as the name of the nearest ship, but "the California" didn't ring any bells and I assumed it was a garbled reference to the state.

[njtt]

Originally Posted by msmith537

See any good spots for offloading 2000 people?

The actual iceberg the Titanic struck looks a good deal worse in that respect.

[TonySinclair]

Originally Posted by Shakester

It wasn't a joke: If the post I was responding to had said "The Californian" I might have recognised it as the name of the nearest ship, but "the California" didn't ring any bells and I assumed it was a garbled reference to the state.

If I were you, I would have said it was a joke. Just sayin.

[GreedySmurf]

Originally Posted by Anne Neville

If the Titanic has just sunk after colliding with an iceberg, the Californian (or any other ship) is probably not going to deliberately sail close to an iceberg. That would be stupid. Most of an iceberg is under water, so it's very possible that you'd run into the underwater part of the iceberg before you could get close to the part that is above the water, where the people would be.

This is the key thing that makes a "lets offload onto the iceberg", the most absurd suggestion.

If you're the captain of the Titanic, who's just had his ship crippled by hitting an iceberg, why in the world would you ever even contemplate going anywhere near another one? And similarly with any rescue ships, why would they place their ship, and their own passengers, in danger by going anywhere near the iceberg?

[TriPolar]

Has a ship ever unloaded it's passengers on an iceberg when in danger of sinking?

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by GreedySmurf

And similarly with any rescue ships, why would they place their ship, and their own passengers, in danger by going anywhere near the iceberg?

Any rescue ship could just take the survivors off with their own lifeboats or other light craft. The Iceberg wrecked the Titanic because the Titanic was a heavy ship going twenty knots. If an oar powered lifeboat hit some undersea ice, its just going to bounce off.

As to getting the Titanic close enough to unload in the first place, I'm not convinced that's as big a problem as people are making it out to be either. Note when looking for the original iceberg, two ships managed to find two different icebergs that had signs of an impact above the waterline. This suggests that in two seperate cases ships were able to get their above waterline structure close enough to the ice to touch. And that's just in the general area of the Titanic collision. Icebergs get wider under the waterline, but I don't think they "flare out" as rapidly as some people seem to be picturing.

Difficulty finding the iceberg again seems a little more likely. But if they'd only gone forward for five minutes or so after the impact as abel29a suggests, I wouldn't think it would be that hard.

[BigT]

Why would you abandon an unsinkable ship?

[TreacherousCretin]

Aren't icebergs slippery?

[Boyo Jim]

If only they had a real expert aboard, someone who could get in really close, steering by eye and instinct, to that iceberg to unload people == someone like Francesco Schettino.

[Beware of Doug]

Unless the OP wishes to claim it, I hereby call rights to the blog name Evacuate to the Iceberg.

[isaiahrobinson]

How do you climb up an iceberg? It's made of ice.

[Alka Seltzer]

Look people, what if the iceberg is then sunk by an even bigger ship? Where does it all end?

[postcards]

Many of the passengers on the sinking Titanic didn't even want to get into the lifeboats, how could you possibly convince them to get onto the damned iceberg?

[Anne Neville]

Originally Posted by Simplicio

As to getting the Titanic close enough to unload in the first place, I'm not convinced that's as big a problem as people are making it out to be either. Note when looking for the original iceberg, two ships managed to find two different icebergs that had signs of an impact above the waterline. This suggests that in two seperate cases ships were able to get their above waterline structure close enough to the ice to touch

Not necessarily. You don't have to get close enough to touch an iceberg to see marks from an impact on it. Especially not if you have binoculars. This picture, which may be of the iceberg that the Titanic hit, was clearly not taken by someone touching the above-water part of the iceberg. The iceberg got the photographer's attention because it had a smear of red paint on it. I'd bet a smear of red paint on a white iceberg would be visible from some distance away.

If that was the iceberg that sank the Titanic, it doesn't look like it would be easy to climb onto. There don't appear to be nice flat areas near the water line. You'd probably need specialized gear for climbing on ice. Why would anyone on the Titanic have such gear ready at hand when they needed to evacuate the ship?

[Really Not All That Bright]

I'm going to go with "because the Titanic wasn't carrying any pitons and everyone who boarded the iceberg would have fallen off and drowned."

[Anne Neville]

The iceberg probably didn't come out of the collision with the Titanic unscathed. Damage from the collision could have caused part of the iceberg to fall off, possibly some time after the collision. Cracks can propagate through ice, so it's not necessarily just the part near where the Titanic hit that is going to be in danger.

When pieces do fall off of icebergs or ice shelves, they can make a big splash when they fall into the water. This would create large and unpredictable waves, making it even more dangerous than usual to get close to the iceberg in a ship or lifeboat. You really wouldn't want to get a ship near an iceberg that has recently been in a collision, making it possibly unstable.

Icebergs can even flip over. This might even be more likely to happen to a recently damaged iceberg. It would, of course, kill anyone who was on the iceberg at the time. Not only that, it would create large, chaotic waves that would pose a danger to any ship near the iceberg at the time.

[ChrisBooth12]

It would not matter. By all accounts even if they had twice as many life boats they needed a shit load of people would have died. The crew did not take the evac seriously until it was to late. Their were to many conflicting orders. Their was only 1 drill the whole way and everyone thought it was a joke. Long story short the crew was really not all that good at their job and resulted in many people dieing. They did not even know how to lower some of the boats correctly nor knew their capiactiy.

[Darth Panda]

Originally Posted by Sailboat

I dunno, they'd already found an iceberg in the dark once that evening....

And, as an added bonus, in addition to sinking an unsinkable ship, they could have set the record for the amount of times a ship crashed into the same iceberg in the one night.

[RedSwinglineOne]

Originally Posted by Simplicio

Icebergs get wider under the waterline, but I don't think they "flare out" as rapidly as some people seem to be picturing.

.

Many of these photographs would suggest they do.

[BobLibDem]

One suggestion I've never seen made on these shows- cut the anchor chains. Suppose they had cut the chains and let the anchors fall away. That would have allowed the bow to rise slightly, easing the water pressure at the holes slightly, and the water would flood in a little slower. It would still sink, but perhaps this could have bought another half hour?

[suranyi]

I've stood on a glacier, which is at least on top of solid ground, and that was quite slippery and hard to get around on. I can only imagine how much worse trying to stand on an iceberg would be.

[Boyo Jim]

The gross weight of the Titanic was over 40,000 tons. The combined weight of the anchors was 30 tons. Maybe 5 or 10 tons more for all the chain. A drop in the bucket.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by njtt

The actual iceberg the Titanic struck looks a good deal worse in that respect.

A sad tale of one of the forgotten victims of the disaster.

[Laggard]

To me a bigger question is why did they try to avoid it once they saw it. A recent television show had a marine engineer who says that had they simply cut engines they would have collided with the berg head-on and then limped home with a partially crumpled bow.

The worst thing that could have happened is what happened. A glancing blow along the side of the ship.

[wheresmymind]

Even if the captain could have maneuvered the ship in right next to the berg without sustaining more damage, there is no way they could have quickly organized an efficient evacuation to the iceberg.

In the "fog of war," the crew didn't even manage an efficient evacuation using the lifeboats at their disposal. Total lifeboat capacity was around 1200, you could easily squeeze in another 150 or so without them floundering when the seas were as glassy as reported that night. Yet they only managed to get about 700 people into lifeboats in the 2 hours before she sank. Despite all the outcry over the insufficient number of lifeboats, the weak link wasn't the number of boats, but rather the unwillingness of the passengers to board them and the inability of the crew to organize an orderly evacuation. Of the people that died that night, at least 600 didn't have to.

If the crew and passengers couldn't handle filing into lifeboats, what makes you think they'd be better at scrambling up an iceberg?

[Anne Neville]

Originally Posted by Laggard

To me a bigger question is why did they try to avoid it once they saw it. A recent television show had a marine engineer who says that had they simply cut engines they would have collided with the berg head-on and then limped home with a partially crumpled bow.

The worst thing that could have happened is what happened. A glancing blow along the side of the ship.

Presumably, they thought they could avoid hitting it and doing damage to the ship.

[Stink Fish Pot]

Originally Posted by BobLibDem

One suggestion I've never seen made on these shows- cut the anchor chains. Suppose they had cut the chains and let the anchors fall away. That would have allowed the bow to rise slightly, easing the water pressure at the holes slightly, and the water would flood in a little slower. It would still sink, but perhaps this could have bought another half hour?

How would they cut the chains to the anchor? Unless there was some release mechanism that would drop the anchors and chains off the ship with a flip of a switch, I can't imagine they would be able to break that chain without some serious time and blowtorch action.

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by Stink Fish Pot

How would they cut the chains to the anchor? Unless there was some release mechanism that would drop the anchors and chains off the ship with a flip of a switch, I can't imagine they would be able to break that chain without some serious time and blowtorch action.

Cutting away an anchor is an age-old emergency procedure at sea. I don't know how it would have been accomplished on the Titanic, but it's not an absurd suggestion. Big ships typically have a lot of tools for heavy jobs of the sort; perhaps they had cutting torches of some kind.